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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon, topped with meringue and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Queen of Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set but not watery.

Top and bake

  1. In another bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff. Gradually beat in the teacup of sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Spread a layer of jelly over the pudding, then pour the meringue on top.

  3. Return to the oven and bake lightly until the meringue is golden.

  4. Let cool and serve with cream if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk to set into a soft custard.
Milk
Provides liquid that, with the egg yolks, bakes into a tender custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during baking, giving a smooth, sliceable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue become stiff and glossy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the crumb and rounding the flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that bakes into a light, golden meringue topping.

The step that matters

Bake the base until set but not watery. Underbaked custard stays loose and makes the layers slide and soak the meringue, while overbaking makes the egg yolks curdle and turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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